With the advent of drive-through restaurants, many people consume beverages and foods while sitting behind a steering wheel of a parked motor vehicle. A tray adapted for mounting from a steeling wheel can provide a convenient holder for beverages and foods. Such a tray, for convenience, needs to be easily adaptable to different types of steering wheels, such as steering wheels having different sizes, shapes, and angles of inclination. Further, it needs to be easily storable in a small place within a motor vehicle, such as a glove compartment or a storage compartment under a seat.
Various trays which can be mounted upon a steering wheel have been developed. For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 3,643,606 discloses a car tray having a pair of table sections, joined together via spring loaded hinges. The table sections are foldable toward and away from each other into a plurality of positions in which they are arrestable via the hinges. Although the tray provides adjustability of a tray top with respect to steering wheel inclination, the construction of the tray is complicated by the utilization of the hinges. Further, the tray is bulky, making the car tray difficult to store in a car.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,060,581 discloses to a steering wheel tray which can be pivotally mounted on a steering wheel. The tray is suspended from a back panel by straps. The inclination of the tray relative to the steering wheel is adjusted by changing the length of the straps; an operation which requires the straps to be bunched together and brass brads to be inserted through slits in the straps. Since there is a finite number of slits, the adjustment capability is limited to set positions. Further, the adjustability of the inclination of the tray is time-consuming because of the need to bunch the straps and then insert the brads therethrough.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,211,962 discloses a serving tray having a body, an U-shaped bail hingedly attached at opposite ends thereof to the body, and a pair of upright braces on the body. The braces include notched marginal portions for releasable interlocking engagement with legs of the bail such that the body and the bail are adjustable relative to each other. Because the braces are not retractable and the bail is relatively large, the tray cannot be conveniently stored in an automobile.